When once asked in a job interview what his proudest achievement has been, Pete Jordan scratched his head and replied “I’m kind of proud that I shaved every day this week.” He was hired on the spot.
Jordan, known by fans as “Dishwasher Pete”, appeared at Quimby’s Bookstore on May 13 to read from his new book, “Dishwasher: One Man’s Quest to Wash Dishes in All 50 States.”
Pete spent the 1990’s traveling the county, washing dishes (which he refers to as “dishing” or “pearl-diving”), scavenging, and writing his serial memoir, “Dishwasher”. Now on its sixteenth issue, the ‘zine has attracted national attention and has garnered him multiple segments on “This American Life” and an invitation to appear on “The Late Show with David Letterman.”
Humble and soft-spoken, Pete agreed to appear on Letterman but showed up for the taping alongside his friend, Jess, who had come along to impersonate the camera-shy author. Letterman was none the wiser to the switch-up and treated Jess on-air as if he were actually Pete.
The pair lament that their one regret in appearing for the taping was not taking full advantage of the show’s backstage catering service. When the show’s assistant told them they could have anything they wanted to eat, they both requested cheese sandwiches. As an afterthought, they upped the ante to cheese sandwiches with “lots of stuff on them”.
Pete has dished his way across America working in small town dives, big city four-star restaurants, mess halls, nursing homes, and, once, an off-shore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil rig-gig involved breaking his “cardinal rule of dishing,” namely that one should never accept a position that doesn’t allow the employee to “leave at any time, without any notice”.
On the brighter side, the oilrig job entailed a helicopter ride over the ocean, which required the watching of a safety video before takeoff. He was given free popcorn for the viewing, and “a warning not to chop one’s face off in the helicopter’s tail rotary wing really made an impression on me.”
It is Dishwasher Pete’s ability to find beauty among monotony while engaging in one of the country’s most thankless professions that have made his writings so engaging. When offered a job at a kosher nursing home, for example, he saw the position as “another opportunity to check something off of my ‘to-do’ list. The (American Pearl-Diving) tradition of laziness, drunkenness, and leaving a job without a moment’s notice is only about 100 years old. Here was a chance to learn an ancient tradition!”
After learning to separate and purify dishes for various culinary purposes, he came to the conclusion that Jesus said to his disciples that Kosher rules were not “law”, per se, but rather a collection of helpful culinary tricks. Pete jokes that newly liberated Christians likely ate ham and cheese sandwiches at the Last Supper.
With his newfound success, Dishwasher Pete gave up his kitchen career in August of 2001. He now lives with his wife in Amsterdam above a bike shop, and is training to be a bike mechanic. He is currently writing a second book about life in Amsterdam, cycling, and bike culture.
A Dutchman recently asked Pete incredulously: “You traveled non-stop for 12 years in one country?”
Yes, he did, and he left behind a wealth of stories that seem to indicate that it was well worth his while.